The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Friday that it would delist wolves in Wyoming and approve the state’s management and hunting plans.

Under the ruling, wolves will be hunted and managed in a trophy game area in the northwest corner of the state outside of Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, the John D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway, the National Elk Refuge and the Wind River Indian Reservation. They can be shot on sight in the rest of the state.

The ruling will be official Sept. 30, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe.

Hunting season is scheduled to begin Oct. 1.

Wyoming has worked for nearly a decade to delist wolves in the state. Wolves were delisted for about three months in 2008 before a federal judge placed them back on Endangered Species Act protection because of concerns over genetic diversity

Wyoming is the last state in the Northern Rocky Mountains to have wolves removed from the endangered species list.

The state is divided into three areas:

A trophy game area in northwest Wyoming in which wolves will be regulated by hunting.

A small, seasonal-game area in northern Lincoln and Sublette counties in which hunters need licenses for part of the year and can shoot them on sight as predators the other part. Called the “flex zone” it gives more protection to wolves for a portion of the year as they move between Wyoming and Idaho.

In the rest of the state, wolves will be considered predators, meaning they can be shot on sight. The plan allows 52 of the state’s estimated 220 to 230 wolves to be killed this fall in northwest Wyoming outside of Yellowstone, Grand Teton National Park, the John D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway, the National Elk Refuge and the Wind River Reservation.

The Wyoming Legislature set aside $600,000 of general fund money to manage wolves for two years, Nesvik said.

The money will pay for costs including flights to put radio collars on wolves and monitor their distribution. It will also cover manpower needed to check each wolf killed during hunting season for a genetic sample.

No additional staff will be hired to help manage wolves. Game and Fish recently restructured its large carnivore section, combining research specialists and conflict management into one group.

It also has a full-time wolf biologist already in its budget. Managing wolves will mean more responsibility, but the group should be able to accomplish delisting goals, Nesvik said.

Wolf tags will be sold over the counter, similar to black bear and mountain lion tags. Hunters will be required to call a hotline to check on the quota for each area before hunting and report a kill within 24 hours. The areas will close when the quota is reached.

In a move that is sure to please many hunters and anger wolf advocates, Idaho approved new wolf hunting regulations that allow the canine predators to be hunted 365 days a year.

It is not a wide open, general hunt. But if one travels around the state, there will always be a place to pursue Canis lupus.

Idaho had allowed 10 months of wolf hunting during the 2011-2012 season, with the hunt open from Aug. 1 to March 31 in most of the state and Aug. 1 to June 30 in the Lolo and Selway zones.

That means the 2011-2012 wolf hunting season came to a close at sunset on Saturday. But under the new regulations, the 2012-2013 season opened Sunday morning.

Here's a rundown: Wolf hunting opens in the Panhandle Zone, on private land only, July 1. The rest of the zone and the rest of the state will open to wolf hunting on Aug. 1 and all but the Lolo and Selway zones will close on March 31. The Lolo and Selway zones will again be open through June.

Hunters can take up to 5 wolves per calandar year but most zones have a cap of 2 wolves per hunter, per year. The Middle Fork Zone, Dworshak-Elk City, Palouse-Hells Canyon, Lolo, Selway and Panhandle zones allow hunters to kill 5 wolves per calendar year.

So it is possible to hunt wolves year-round by starting on private land in the Panhandle Zone in July and then hunting anywhere in the state starting Aug. 1, moving to the Lolo and Selway zones on April 1 and back to the Panhandle on July 1.

Of course, if a hypothetical hunter were to does this, he or she would also have to balance when and where the wolves were taken to stay within the 5-per-calander-year bag limit and the more restricted bag limits in zones mostly south of the Salmon River.

In the hunting season that started last August and ended Saturday, Idaho hunters took 255 wolves. Trappers killed another 124 wolves in the season that opened Nov. 15 and ran through March.

That is a total of 379 wolves out of an estimated minimum population of between 700 and 1,000. However, Idaho Fish and Game officials believe the population exceeds 1,000 animals.

On the bright-side! Idaho Fish & Game is making money selling wolf hunting licenses that replaces money lost when out of state hunters no-longer purchased deer & elk permits for our wolf-depleted big-game herds.

It's game management dudes! Get over the: "I love the wild doggie-woggie" blues.

Talk about a stupid and wasteful use of resouces! Spend millions of tax dollars to re-establish wolves against the wishes of the locals, pushed to do so by people from out of the area who will never have to live with them, waste millions more in court fights, then spend yet more to eliminate most of them. Meanwhile lots of livestock, game, and now wolves paid with their lives. Way to go America! No wonder our economy is in trouble.

I just drove through Yellowstone and Grand Teton a few weeks ago with a friend who lives in Livingston. Saw NO wildlife except for bison. No elk, no moose, only a couple of dear. He said it was because of the wolves that were brought into the area. They are killing everything else off.

I was browsing in a library video collection yesterday and came across a video titled "Yellowstone, land of the Coyotes" and thought sadly to myself, "not anymore, they too have been decimated by the wolves".

Hey Jim, I am not a Republican, so I am safe in that sense, but Piton Ron scares, me, as I am a liberal. Will he be coming after me? Will he be able to pack his rifle/pistol on a flight to Ireland? Will Piton Ron be able to buy a gun on the market here to hunt me, a liberal? Or will he just be content gunning down liberals in the States?

Hey Ron, just trying to bring some light-heartedness to the conversation.

Clearly, the balance of nature has been upset. But by whom? The wolves? Humans? The government? Too many fat cattle?

I do not know the answer.

All I know is that I do not want a cougar staring in my window (as was posted - a photo - several years ago by a Taco Stander). Or a pack of wolves chasing me. Yet, we do have to give these creatures some space.

Do human beings have a monopoly on the earth?

Imagine, year 2200 or thereabouts, only humans and insects (and bacteria and viruses). The humans will lose.

I like the idea of letting nature take its course. I grew up in the country in a popular deer hunting area. Witnessed salt licks and tree stands that made it pretty easy to bag a set of antlers. I never have hunted in my life but I have had good venison jerky. One of my buddies once shot a elk (his rack was as big as the front of an SUV) they packed 200 lbs of meat out of a 1200 lb animal home (what a waste). I feel like if you hunt you get all of the animal home with you and as part of getting to use our natural resources (for your hunting pleasure) a donation to a soup kitchen or food pantry should be mandatory along with utilizing every thing possible of the animal.

Why is it that reactionaries have such a problem with benign ( yeah I know we're all public trough ranchers) predators like wolves, and yet mountain lions, which actually do, cause problems for people, like eating them -something wolves don't do- get a pretty much free pass? Ie problem animals are dealt with on a case by case basis, but you don't hear calls for eradication. There are no problem wolves, (again except for private commercial special interests) so no case by case dealings, and yet the hysteria is rampant.

Is it just that Big cats don't threaten their manhood on a psychological level?

A wolf lying in a pool of blood is very heart rending. Sad it came to to this... half of the transplanted wolf population in Idaho slain by hunting and trapping as well as illegal killing in the last year.

And perhaps more newspaper or magazine headlines heralding THE RETURN OF THE GRAY WOLF will impel more wolf tag sales!

...while they slyly omit the fact that 99% of the wolves in the world are Gray Wolves...and passing over the specific that there is no evidence of the transplanted Occidentalis subspecies having occupied the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, ever.

The metro-press will continue putting a gloss on the experiment and cloaking the local quandry in Idaho/Montana/Wyoming.

The wrong wolf in the right niche is what results with government money, mecenary biologists and as as Rox expressed it... eco-ninnies bearing down on bureaucrats and judges rule.

More wolves...fewer ranchers. The demographics favor wolves, cattle ranching is a dying industry in most of the West just as sheep ranching is in Patagonia. Wolves are repopulating their ancestral home- who is the immigrant group in this case? Ranching has been around for less than 150 years, when did the first wolves appear on the scene?

Yes, those vicious canadian wolves couldn't possibly wander into Idaho or viceversa. They don't have passports. Let's test the dna of ranchers and see how they match the first human inhabitants. The dna classification of wolves has gone from 24 down to just 5 now in north america because there was so much interbreeding.

Ranchers didn't eliminate the wolves from Yellowstone or Idaho. They were extirpated by federal marshalls in the early twentieth century with an active shooting and poisoning campaign. A small population of the native subspecies was said to exist in Idaho wilderness areas...and slowly making a comeback before the introduction of the Mackenzie Valley subspecies.

The Gray Wolf subspecies classifications were not based on DNA profiling..

You can bet those federal agents where working in the interests of the ranchers and the fears of the locals.

The characteristics of any restored local population will eventually match it's environment. That's the way nature works. To complain that dna restoration isn't perfect is silly. The environment is not the same as it was either.

I seriously doubt that hunting delisted wolves will have much of an impact on the population numbers. The fukkers are SNEAKY and are seldom seen in the open. There could be a 25 wolf per hunter limit, and I'd be willing to bet that very few hunters would even see a wolf to shoot, much less manage to bag one. Most of the predator-designated wolves have been shot from helicopters in response to local complaints.

I have seen seen five different maps of Gray Wolf subspecies distribution (and posted at least three on ST) They don't agree 100%...but all show the mass preponderance of upper U.S. Rocky Mountains arrayed in theCanis Lupus Nubilus zone.

The environment is so different now, who can say what should be natural today. Let nature sort it out.

Yes, nature will sort it out. Sorting it by reducing some elk populations in central ID by 85% since occidentalis was introduced...I mean "restored"...and sorting by completely decimating the moose population in Targhee Creek, near my cabin..

I'm afraid human nature is going to be be a major factor in the sorting,now. Not that I welcome hearing guns ...

Speaking of Elk populations, they truly need wolves in Estes park! That place is a disaster!

So, to rephrase the question I asked up thread, why are certain topics qaraunteed, hot button topics? You can troll more responses than you can deal with by mentioning, religion, republicans, Democrats, any current politician, guns, trad climbing, rap bolting, veganism etc, in a thread title. We are used to that.

But why do some topics, like wolves, that have almost nothing to do with 90% of the population make that list?
Wolves basicly affect almost no one. But everyone feels the need to have an opinion. Yeah they piss off people trying to raise sheep and cows in appropriate locations. Big deal! They do not do the damage to human populations that mtn lions, dogs, or anything with rabies does, yet they garner an inordinate emotional response. Why is that?

Jaybro...To answer your question..Maybe environmentalism is the line in the sand and having more wolves is a step in the right direction but on the other hand if they are impacting ranchers livestock and having an adverse effect on other wildlife...?

wolves do indeed eat people. BUt even worse, unlike mtn lions, they kill out of habit and "fun". They run deer, elk, and many other mammals relentlessly- and either catch them or chase them from the area

Can we also get rid of all the humans who kill deer, elk, and many other mammals (and non-mammals) for sport?

You wouldn't be doing it often if you didn't enjoy it. And I'm not saying there is a problem with it, but there is a lot of fun in hunting, most of us derive pleasure from the chase and the shot or we wouldn't do it, we moralize by defering our pleasure from "the kill" onto the other aspects of the hunt, but its all the same.

There is nothing wrong with it, but claiming people don't hunt for fun in these modern times (along with other valid reasons - cheap meat being one of them :D ) is disingenuous.

Fishing is also quite the same, its fun to catch and kill fish. We morally 'cleanse' ourselves by claiming we don't enjoy the actual killing, but in the end, thats just a lie we tell ourselves.

Along with wolves and cats. I don't understand why you think your pleasure from the chase is any different then the wolves. Was the hunt necessary for your immediate survival? Most likely not. That means you, at its essence, hunt for fun and pleasure. Be it the pleasure of being able to provide your own food or the fun of being outdoors, or the instinctual pleasure from tracking and chasing game. Hunting IS fun, and hunting is, at its essence, killing.

Cats play with their prey for fun, we do the same when tracking our game. Any distinction we place on their motives vs ours is just a little lie we say to convince ourselves we are rational empathetic beings.

This Idaho Fish and Game- graphic illustrates the decline in elk numbers in the Lolo Zone where wolf density in Idaho is highest. (The declines in the 19990's were due to hard winters but the agency maintains that the decrease over the last decade was primarily due to predation by the wolves.

The wolf population in this wildlife management zone was estimates to be as high as 100 in 2010.

Wolves were shot from F & G agency helicopters in an attempt to contain the population. That effort is continuing. According to the agency, wolves in the Lolo Zone now number less than 50. (from hunting and F & G helicopter culling)

I just drove through Yellowstone and Grand Teton a few weeks ago with a friend who lives in Livingston. Saw NO wildlife except for bison. No elk, no moose, only a couple of dear. He said it was because of the wolves that were brought into the area. They are killing everything else off.

Brokendown...I believe you about Elk hunting being a way of Life in Wyoming...In Michigan they close the schools down for opening day of deer season and you don't dare go into the woods without day-glow clothing...

OR: ‘Canadian’ wolves – How big and bad are they?
Posted on June 21, 2012 by TWIN Observer
By Pat Valkenburg

To many people in rural areas of the West, bringing wolves back was a bad idea. To perhaps have brought back a possibly larger subspecies that was never here to begin with (the “Canadian” wolf) has added fuel to the controversy.

Pictures of very large wolves taken during the Idaho hunting season have appeared on the Internet, but some people suspect the photos have been digitally enhanced to make the wolves appear larger than they actually are.

So, what is the truth about these “Canadian” wolves? Are they really larger than the original wolf that used to roam the western states, and if so, how much larger are they?

Perhaps more importantly, if the introduced wolf is a larger subspecies, are they more likely to kill livestock and working dogs or to kill more deer and elk than the original subspecies?

Within the last several months, using newly available genetic information in addition to existing morphometric data, research biologists (Steven M. Chambers, Steven R. Fain, Bud Fazio, and Michael Amaral) with the US Fish and Wildlife Service completed an extensive review of wolves in North America – the third comprehensive review since 1944.

These researchers support the view that only three subspecies of wolves should be recognized in western North America and that a single subspecies (Canis lupus nubilus) inhabited all of the western states north of Arizona and New Mexico, and southern Alberta, southern British Columbia and Southeast Alaska.

The original common name for this relatively small wolf was “plains” wolf because it was first encountered by Europeans on the Great Plains. Although it was completely eliminated from the western United States by the late 1920s (except for a handful in the Cascades until the early 1940s), it continued to exist in healthy numbers in southwestern Canada and southeastern Alaska.

A considerably larger northwestern wolf (Canis lupus occidentalis) occupied northern Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon, and the rest of Alaska. This wolf has always been common and its distribution has never been appreciably affected by human activity. The northwestern wolf evolved in northeast Asia and Beringia during the Wisconsin Glaciation, while smaller subspecies of wolves developed south of the ice sheets.

The third subspecies of wolf in western North America, the Mexican wolf (Canis lupus baileyi), is the only subspecies that was ever truly endangered, having died out in the wild in Sonora in the 1970s. It is currently being reintroduced from captive animals into northern Arizona and New Mexico.

Unfortunately, biologists did not have good information on wolf genetics during the early 1990s when the decision was made to reintroduce wolves to Wyoming and Idaho from Alberta and British Columbia.

The concern at the time was that wolves for reintroduction should come from relatively abundant populations that had experience at hunting elk and bison, the two major prey species in Yellowstone National Park that were considered overly abundant.

Although there is a zone in southcentral British Columbia and southern Alberta where the two subspecies mix, the capture sites (Hinton, AB and Fort Saint John, BC) of the wolves transplanted to Wyoming and Idaho were well within the range of the larger, northern subspecies.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game sent two pilots and two biologists to help with wolf capture and they were impressed by the large size of the wolves and their similarity to Alaskan wolves. The largest males weighed around 140 pounds.

The original wolf of the western states was 20-25% smaller, with large males seldom exceeding 110 pounds and the largest recorded being 125 pounds. The skull size of the northwestern wolf is also about 4-6% larger than that of the plains wolf. The evidence is pretty clear that the subspecies of wolf brought to the western states for reintroduction is not the same wolf that historically lived here.

Will this larger subspecies make a difference? Although it is generally true that larger predators tend to select larger species of prey, there is plenty of evidence that the original wolves made a good living hunting bison and elk and were often a serious problem for livestock as well, including the horses raised by Native Americans (for many examples see “The Wolves of North America” by Stanley P. Young and Edward A. Goldman, published in 1944).

No matter which subspecies of wolf had been reintroduced, managing livestock depredation problems would have required considerable money and effort, just as it did with the smaller plains wolf.

Fortunately for cattle ranchers, wolves seem to prefer elk more than domestic animals. The natural tendency for most wolves to hunt elk, and use of nonlethal conditioning methods combined with lethal removal of wolves that develop a pattern of killing livestock, should keep livestock depredation to a low and economically tolerable level.

However, it will be important for wolf advocates to be willing to compromise with ranchers on the issue of lethal wolf control because the interests of ranchers are critical, not only to successful wolf reintroduction, but to the conservation of habitat for many other species of wildlife as well.

The effects of the new, larger subspecies of wolf (or any subspecies for that matter) on populations of elk, deer, and other wildlife are more of an unknown and will likely be quite variable. All of the original ecosystems of the western states have been greatly modified by fencing, grazing, introduction of new species of plants, and by agriculture. In other words, it’s a whole new ballgame now, not just because of the larger wolf.

The amount of wolf predation on elk and other game species that people are willing to tolerate will be ultimately up to state legislators, governors, game commissioners, and voters. It is likely that wolf control programs, such as those conducted in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, will be eventually implemented in other states as the range of the wolf continues to expand.

Pat Valkenburg is a certified wildlife biologist who worked for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for 28 years on caribou, wolves, bears, and other wildlife. Since first retiring from ADF&G in 2003, he has continued to work on wildlife research projects in Alaska, Ontario, Manitoba, Labrador, and Oregon. He has spent the last two winters in the Enterprise area working with his wife Audrey Magoun, documenting the presence of wolverines in the Wallowa Mountains.

Your're totally incorrect about hunters. Some 80% of the hunters I've known are strictly after the meat. Lots of hunters in this category are at the lower incomes side of the socioeconomic spectrum and NEED the wild game to ease the burden of feeding a family. I've seen an awful lot of hispanics hunting for exactly that reason.

Hunting while I was in Grad school, trying to support a family on a graduate teaching assistantship, was damned useful. It was possible to save alot of $$$ on groceries by fishing and hunting. I managed to draw a moose permit, and bagged on the Fall of my final year in school; it made life pretty good, even though I was living on $375 with a wife and baby.

...tells the quintessence of the blunders and disregard of the wolf introduction without carping or caring what Mrs. Grundy might say...and short enough that forum readers might pore over it.

Brokedownclimber struck a chord about very low income families in the upper Rocky Mountain states. Many depend on deer and elk to help in feeding their families.

...my dad worked at the Freedom Arms factory in Star Valley, WY a few months between coaching jobs. Some of the locals would drive into the Idaho hills from the east and harvest deer and elk for subsistence. The Idaho game wardens seldom came because they had to go the long way around and come in through Wyoming to patrol the area.

...a similar situation on the Idaho side of the Tetons...low income people from Driggs and Victor go into the lightly patroled foothills in Wyoming to get deer.

Breaking the law is wrong...but locals will look the other way and wardens will refrain from citing individuals they know are hurting to provide for their families.

As Ron said, there are those who collect the racks as well as eating the animal. Why, you might ask? In my case it's strictly a "memorabilia" thing, and a way for a old fart to remember some happy, but bygone days.
Much of hunting involves the cameraderie with several close friends who share similar views and interests. As a climber, do you hang out with bowlers or golfers? Skydivers tend to hang out at the airports with other jumpers, or sometimes the pilots of the jump plane.

I can understand the sentiments of the "wolf lovers," but I can deride them for their unrealistic fantasies about the "BENIGN" nature of these PREDATORS.

Hunting guiding is a big part of some areas economies. Food production is hardly the goal. Paying a guide service and renting of the hunting lodge to help you get food is pretty costly. They are out there for the experience.

It's mega ironic when a cattle rancher tries to portray wolves as viscous killers when they make their livelihood from a killing industry.

Wolves can't operate guns or pop into Micky D's, so I guess that makes them vicious. Man is the top PREDATOR.

Wyoming also has unlimited mountain lion tags available; there's a catch, though. A kill must be reported, and the "season" is prone to changing after the "quota" has filled. They're here at my ranch, and I've seen tracks but never an animal.

Paying a guide service and renting of the hunting lodge to help you get food is pretty costly.

And then there are Ted Nugent's "hunting safari's" where the dress the animal up in a tutu for you to make the shot easier. Certainly not for fun AMIRITE!

just to clarify, I have nothing against hunting as I've done it before, I love fishing, and I'm a target archer as well, I just see it for what it is in the first world another recreational activity. Just like climbing/hiking/backpacking. And in the same vein "gun nuts" and "gun collectors" aren't the epitome of american patriotism and reeking of hardman that they think they are, they are hobbyists in the same way that a kid collecting yu-gi-oh cards is.

SPOKANE, Wash. — The state Fish and Wildlife Department spent nearly $77,000 to kill seven wolves in a pack that had been preying on cattle in Stevens County in northeast Washington.Only one wolf was killed in a 39-day ground hunt that cost nearly $55,000. The other six wolves were killed in a four-day period in September using a helicopter and a marksman that cost $22,000.The Spokesman-Review reports ( http://is.gd/1UlKN8); the cost was disclosed in a letter the Department of Fish and Wildlife sent to state Sen. Kevin Ranker of Orcas Island, chairman of the legislative committee overseeing the department.Ranker has criticized the decision to kill the Wedge pack and is planning a legislative hearing next year.